Preview: UFC Fight Night 214 ‘Rodriguez vs. Lemos’

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Welterweights

#13 WW | Neil Magny (26-9, 19-8 UFC) vs. #14 WW | Daniel Rodriguez (17-2, 7-1 UFC)

ODDS: Magny (-115), Rodriguez (-105)

An interesting welterweight pairing also serves as a bit of a crossroads fight in this co-main event. Magny has settled into a niche as the gatekeeper to any sort of success at 170 pounds—a testament to the improvement he has shown over his career and his willingness to fight anyone at any time. Debuting in 2013 after a stint on “The Ultimate Fighter,” Magny was an afterthought on the fringes of the roster until he suddenly put together a run of 10 wins in 11 fights, his surge somehow packed into a stretch of only about 25 months. That led to a sense that Magny’s high standing was due to volume of wins rather than quality, but fighter after fighter found himself frustrated by “The Haitian Sensation.” Either Magny managed to use his long reach to keep opponents at bay or use that annoyance to convince them to walk into his surprisingly strong clinch game. There have been a few points where opponents can take away one or two of Magny’s strengths and absolutely shred him to pieces, but he has won much more than he has lost, even if there are a few signs that he may be aging out of his prime. Magny walked away with an extremely narrow victory over Max Griffin in March that saw him get blasted at a few points, and Shavkat Rakhmonov bullied the Elevation Fight Team standout without much issue before tapping him out in the second round. Admittedly, that probably says more about Rakhmonov’s strength and talent than anything else, but it does raise some concerns heading into an important fight against Rodriguez.

Somehow the older fighter in this matchup, Rodriguez has essentially followed the Magny blueprint towards welterweight relevance. “D-Rod” had a flat performance on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2019—he earned a win but not a contract—but wound up getting the UFC call a few months later for a tough test against Tim Means early in 2020. Rodriguez surprisingly knocked Means silly before scoring a second-round submission, and from there, it was off to the races. Rodriguez stepped in as often as possible and won all but one of his fights, showing 15 minutes of consistent punching power and proving quite difficult to take off track. An August 2021 victory over Kevin Lee figured to be the name win to finally bump Rodriguez up to bigger things, but instead, a hand injury took him out of action for over a year before finally returning to defeat Jingliang Li in September. Despite the result, it was a pedestrian performance from Rodriguez, though that was understandable. Beyond Rodriguez getting booked on the card on late notice and having to shake off the rust, the fight was part of the last-minute UFC 279 shuffle that left neither man with much time to gameplan. There is the chance the Californian can hit a few big moments of offense and walk away with a win on the scorecards, but the bet is that Magny can use some combination of his reach and clinch work—a factor in Rodriguez’s 2020 loss to Nicolas Dalby—to eke out victory in a close fight. The pick is Magny via decision.

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Rodriguez vs. Lemos
Sherman vs. Parisian
Ulanbekov vs. Maness
Dawson vs. Madsen
The Prelims